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Thirty One bags
Most miniature gamers know that storing and transporting your minis can be a challenge. The ubiquitous Battle Foam trays are nice but spendy. They can also be bulky, and you still need to carry your books, dice and extras in a separate container. I'd rather spend that money on more miniatures!
So, I built my own custom miniature transport container that is affordable and functional.
Back when I started this hobby, my wife's friend was selling Thirty-One bags. You might have heard of them. The wife bought me a bunch of the open top bags in the very manly color of slate grey. They have a box shape with a square metal frame at the top and some long handles to carry over my shoulder. I got a few in different sizes. They work great for transporting most of my gaming equipment. Their big drawback is that they don't have rigid sides which is a problem when you're hauling around your fragile little soldiers. Another drawback is the typical cheap plastic "shoebox" just aren't the right size for the bag.
Luckily, I found a good tutorial on YouTube by Doctor Faust. He gives a short instructional video on how to build little wooden shelves that can be customized to fit into any container. The video is here.
I customized his design so it would fit nicely into one of the smaller Thirty-One bags and ended up with a great storage system for hauling around the figs. The materials are very inexpensive and can be found at most hardware stores. The one I built is large enough to hold 8 platoons of 15mm Americans for Flames of War with plenty of room for more figs. Rulebooks and accessories fit in there too. Another nice thing about it, is I can make more shelves and permanently store figs from a different game system. That way I can switch out the shelves whenever needed and reuse the same bag.
I bought a large sheet of 1/8" plywood and cut them down to size
glued on some poplar wood strips
Added a rubber non-slip cabinet liner (cheap!) and loaded the units
put them in the bag with books and gear. Ready to go!
Anyone else come up with some inexpensive transport solutions?
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